Downtown New Haven Summer Art Stroll
Creative Arts Workshop
80 Audubon Street
Through June 28, 2026
There are no pure blacks in the painting Q Bridge. It show a blue night instead, with some shades so dark you may mistake it for black. There is room for contemplation (probably wrought in frustration and angst) in these varying shades of blue, but none in a black.
This piece, amongst many others, is displayed at Creative Arts Workshop during this year’s Summer Art Stroll, a free self-guided event with 22 stops throughout the Chapel Street, Broadway, and Whitney-Audubon districts. Visitors are invited to “explore local businesses featuring artwork by local artists,” collecting stamps along the way with the official Art Stroll Guide and Passport. Stamps can be used to collect free rewards at Willoughby’s Coffee & Tea and Ashley’s Ice Cream.
My first local art event when I moved to New Haven last year was a similar art stroll with a stamp incentive. I stopped by CAW back then too, already sipping on my redeemed iced coffee. So for old time’s sake and to work towards another mid-day pick-me-up, I first asked for a stamp.
The works for the art stroll are near the entrance, along the walls immediately next to the entrance, and in the small gallery. They feature 28 pieces by faculty members and teaching artists. It all serves as a wonderfully-varied feast and primer to CAW’s other featured exhibit, ThisPlay.
Q Bridge, a moody painting of the Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge, is peppered with brilliant texture. Short swizzles with a small brush created smooth ripples in the water, with drier bristles responsible for that signature roughness of a beam holding up the bridge. Blue can sometimes be a boring color, especially in landscape paintings, but here it avoids being repetitive. The lighter blue wisps are included sparingly, just enough to naturally guide my eye line in a diagonal. I’ve seen many paintings depict light with streaks for drama (reminding me that I have astigmatism and naturally see all light this way), but the light sources in Q Bridge have a more gentle and smooth glow. I saw myself walking along the edge of the bridge. Bright white to my sides, orange below and behind me, yellow streetlights above and behind. I wondered if I would feel more connected to my environment and the people who created all of this man-made light, with no moon in sight. Would I find answers to the rhetorical questions that plague my 20s, or would I instead be suffocated by what man has created on top of the water?
I asked the House hippo with teeth how it came to be. A house hippo is a fictional tiny hippo from a Canadian public service announcement that claimed that these hippos nest inside our bedroom closets and munch on potato chips and peanut butter toast crumbs. The 1999 public service announcement encouraged critical thinking and overall skepticism when consuming media (in fact, it only mentions TV, and nothing of the internet). I was naive to think this was not already an issue in the year I was born. But of course, despite the implications of this PSA, the house hippos are also adorable, and I would be delighted to discover one. It could swim in my cat’s water bowl. So naturally, this concept has inspired many a kitchen set, and other house decor. Sherry Block’s house hippo prompts more of that unease than the original PSA intended. This house hippo has sharp teeth. It’s not as cute or as useful as a hippo piggy bank. Its entire frame has jagged edges, even over the roundness of its belly. The paint is chipped and cracked. And while I’m unfamiliar with the process around metal sculpture, I took one glance at its neighbor, the Toothy heron, to learn that Block deliberately omitted warmth and life when crafting her hippo. Her hippo is falling apart.
